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Am I Ready for Retirement?

Are you financially and emotionally ready to retire? What are the things you should consider when thinking of retirement? Here, we discuss some of the necessities for determining “retirement readiness.”

Goals for Retirement

When deciding to retire, the first step is to have your own fine-tuned vision of what retirement looks like. What are your goals for the next life stage? To better understand yourself, you might consider filling out a goal-setting questionnaire, such as this True Wealth Questionnaire that we frequently use with our clients.

The purpose of our easy goal-setting questionnaire is primarily not financial, but mostly about measuring where your life is today and what you want your future to look like.

Financial Ability

Once your lifestyle vision is sorted out, it is time to shift the focus to the financial planning side. Try to estimate a financial plan that projects the next 30 years or so.

Consider talking to a financial planner to get a good sense of what your lifestyle will be like in retirement if you retire today, or at a certain point in the future. A comprehensive financial plan will expand on other issues too, like how much you can afford to help your children or grandchildren, or how to support your favourite charities. Based on your financial ability, you might get a “green light” for retirement, but it doesn’t mean you should retire.

Personal Considerations

Of course, financial ability is not the only concern for retirement.

For many of us, our jobs are an important part of our identities and can be very difficult to give up “cold turkey.” Also, retirement can significantly alter the balance and routine that currently exists with your spouse or partner – sometimes in a bad way.

Another issue is how to fill all of your free time. Without a plan that reflects your retirement vision, hobbies and goals, the free time can lead to depression. Eileen Chadnick, a certified coach and principal at Big Cheese Coaching in Toronto, says it is a mistake to plan for a life of full-time leisure, “Seven days of fishing gets stale very fast. The balance paradigm shifts in retirement. The key is to determine what the right balance is for you”

The issue of retirement has become much more complicated than simply aiming for a financial number. Much like other things in life, a successful and happy retirement takes planning – both financial and emotional.